10 Ways to Get More Re-Tweets

by Neil Patel on November 28, 2011

Do you want more Twitter traffic? Well, who doesn’t? One of the best ways to get more Twitter traffic is to get more re-tweets…but you already know that.

But do you know how to get more re-tweets? Other than the basic things like writing great content or adding Twitter buttons to your website, there have to be advanced ways to get more re-tweets, right?

So, if you want to get the most re-tweets, consider tweeting out messages on Wednesday at 5PM EST.

Time people’s tweets

You already know that you can place Twitter buttons on your website to get more re-tweets, but wouldn’t you ideally want people to click the re-tweet button during 5PM EST?

If you just use the normal Twitter button, you can’t control when people re-tweet your content. But if you use the Buffer Twitter button, you can control when someone’s tweet goes out.

The way it works is that when people click the Buffer tweet button, it automatically pushes the tweet out during ideal times instead of pushing it out instantly. This way the tweets get the most visibility, which should help them get re-tweeted more.

Tweet quotes

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll notice that I tweet a lot of quotes. Whether it’s quotes I am coming up with or others are, they tend to get anywhere from 20 to a few hundred re-tweets.

The reason I tweet these quotes is because it’s not only causing my followers to get used to re-tweeting my stuff, but it’s also helping me grow my follower count.

Plus, if I tweet a quote and then tweet about something else within a minute, that second tweet tends to get re-tweeted an additional 4.1%. So, if you want to increase your re-tweets, start to tweet quotes.

Place re-tweet buttons throughout your blog posts

I wrote a blog post on “business advice in 3 words” last year, and the post got over 417 re-tweets. The reason it was so successful is because for every phrase I used to describe business, I added a tweet button next to it.

In total, the post had 54 re-tweet buttons. And out of the 417 plus re-tweets, 283 of them came from the 54 re-tweet buttons within the blog post.

Don’t be afraid to place re-tweet buttons within your copy whenever you have an interesting phrase that people may like. It can drastically increase the number of re-tweets you get. It has worked well for me and other blogs like On Startups.

Add links within your tweets

If you look at the image above, you’ll notice that 18.96% of all tweets contain a link. But when it comes to re-tweets, a whopping 56.69% of them contain a link. So, if you want your tweets to be re-tweeted, you have better odds if you include a link.

Let people pay you with a tweet

Have you thought about a concept in which people can pay you with a tweet? For example, Simply Measured lets you gain access to some of its products if you tweet about the company. And if you want to use some of its advanced features without having to pay, it usually asks you to tweet about it again.

This method has helped the company attract over an extra 1,000 new customers each month.

Another example of this is to give away a free White Paper or E-book. In exchange to giving access to this free material, you can request a tweet, which should help you get more downloads.

Build relationships

Networking doesn’t have to take place offline. Every week, I try to get to know at least 5 Twitter users that have over 20,000 followers. I do so by direct messaging them, communicating with them through email, tweeting at them, and re-tweeting some of their tweets.

After my relationship with these users grows over time, every once in a while, I’ll ask them to re-tweet some of my tweets. And because they have a ton of followers, that tweet also gets re-tweeted a handful of times.

If you can build relationships with enough power users, you can ask them all at once to re-tweet some of your tweets, which should cause your numbers to go through the roof.

Use 1.62 Syllables per word

If you look at the image above, you’ll notice that most re-tweets contain 1.62 syllables per tweet. While most tweets contain 1.58 syllables per word.

So don’t try to dumb things down…don’t be afraid to sound smart.

People follow hashtags

Yes, people do follow people, but they also follow hashtags. Just look at the trending sections area on Twitter, or, better yet, check out Trendistic to see what hashtags are being used right now.

Did you know that 1% to 2% of the tweets on Twitter include hashtags? That may not sound like a lot, but with over 200 million tweets a day, anywhere from 2 to 4 million of them contain hashtags.

So, if you can leverage popular hashtags, your tweets will be more likely seen by others, which will cause more re-tweets.

Conclusion

Getting re-tweets isn’t an art, it’s a science. If you leverage the information above, you’ll maximize the number of re-tweets you get. Give it a whirl. Try just a few of the tips above, and you’ll start to see more re-tweets.

If you want to break through to real profits online, you need some serious firepower. For a limited time I’m sharing some select tips and tricks Amazon, Microsoft, NBC & Hewlett Packard paid thousands of dollars per hour for, FREE.

How can we NOT learn something new here, Neil? This is one of the best tips for retweeting posts that I have seen. Clear, easy to follow and most of all, easy to implement. This truly is a science, judging by your analysis. Good to have the list of words that we need to avoid. And I wasn’t aware of the Buffer button one can use.

Yes, this was very helpful indeed. I didn’t realized that people get retweets by words they are using. I also use a lot of quotes in my tweets and got a few of them retweeted. This was a very educating post anyway and I learned some new things about being more successful on Twitter. Thank Neil!

I feel it’s really important to tweet when your followers are ready to retweet and there are few apps which let you know when your most followers stay online and you can schedule your tweets accordingly and it certainly works.

I think the nature of most vs least retweeted words is interesting. I wonder if the data has changed in the last 1.5 years? Mostly it seems like being positive matters, and things oriented towards Twitter interest followers.

I’m sure the data may have changed slightly. Being positive is always a good idea. People respond better to positive words, it gives them a good feeling. Which in turn makes them want to pass it along to others.

Great stuff Neil…We didn’t pay much attention to Twitter before because we simply didn’t understand it. We get it now and are kind of obsessed

Two things to add would be allowing enough extra space so people can add something and your RT’s don’t get truncated. Also scheduling your tweets to go out at or around the same times each day so people get used to seeing them at a specific time and/or actively look for them at that specific time.

Nice post Neil your entries are always goldmines for opportunists. I have recently taken to Twitter myself and I’m using it to unconventionally leverage myself and build a team for my potential startup. I’m just the average college kid with an idea looking to surround myself with people who can help make it happen. We’ll see if it works. Either way though, this Twitter science is great stuff and will help those who use it to their advantage.

You give some great suggestions that I will have to think about when using my Twitter account.

I was wondering if you have looked into Triberr.com at all? You join a tribe, and all your tribe mates retweet your posts for you. If you have a good tribe, you’ll get your other tweets retweeted, comments on your blog, and a solid social network as well.

Awesome data. I’m surprised LOL isn’t #1 of the words to not be retweeted. The fact that “Please Retweet” was on the list of words most likely to be retweeted goes right to the point of asking for what you want. I often advise clients to directly ask for retweets and likes, and shares. They’ll sometimes resist, but once they try it and see the positive results they take to the advice pretty well…

Damn, really is a science with all those venn diagrams and ECGs. Haha, I’m really going to try and start following your suggestions on the best post times for various social media platforms and see if I can get larger spikes than normal.

Good Article. I understand the logic of viral effect through twitter but still find it difficult to comprehend if people really read each other tweets that often. If you are following lot of followers, then its even more difficult to track the conversation.
I think I am missing some obvious thing.

I believe people do read tweets that often. We are in an age where people are constantly interacting on social media sites like twitter. All hours of the day, every day people share, read and connect through twitter, way to much to not be reading each others tweets.

Hello Neil,
I enjoyed reading your post about getting more re-tweets. I didn’t know that there were certain words that can increase one’s re-tweets — I’ll definitely keep those highly recommended words in mind. I also found your advice on timing tweets interesting. I’ll try that, too. Thank you for these very helpful information. More power

Hi Neil,
Thanks for sharing this, yes I agreed with everything you said here. The most important thing is building relationship with other twitter users, retweet some of their tweet and if they happens to retweet yours, you should THANK them in return and by doing this, you will be building trust and relationship with them.

Another way to get people retweet your tweet if you don’t have enough followers is by adding your tweets here http://www.JustRetweet.com which other users will get your tweet retweeted. So Neil, I think you should include JustRetweet on your next list

It seems to me that call to actions are included a lot in the “good” words to use. I also think that quotes make excellent tweet, however it really isn’t much use if I only have 5 followers, eh? Those statistics are pretty cool though.

Hi Niel,
Thank you for the great information. I have been doing some of what you suggested on Twitter, but will most definitely implement some of the other ideas you provided here to increase my network of followers through retweets!

I’ve been struggling using twitter in business, and even on a personal level. This post has given me some motivation though. Since I mainly work in Gambling, most forms of promotions seem to come off “spammy” it seems. So I’m always trying to balance that out.

Great stuff though Neil, and thanks for the info. I’m always amazed at the stats you share. Thanks!

I hope you are able to find a way to balance it out. It can be difficult if people see your tweets as spam. Try out some of the ideas from this post. Hopefully they will help to increase your success in retweets.

As far as i tried to get more followers was only to tweet some interesting things and gain niche and large amount of followers. But i never thought if words also can help me out to become popular over twittter. Thanks Neil ! You are superb.

I just love the way you analyze different basic activity and and web design as described in previous post as Analytic is being one of my favorite subject for research. The thing I like in above blog is the time you have mentioned to get more exposure. There are tools which schedules your tweets automatically with time specified by you.

Cool, thanks for letting me know what you liked best about this post. Definitely check out those tools and try using them sometime. If no longer having to manually post your tweets you will save yourself a lot of time.

Hey Neil,
I loved your idea about building relations. Actually I had read your post a couple of weeks back and decided to try it out. I followed someone on twitter who had tons of followers and after about a week I asked him if he would retweet my tweet and today he was kind enough to do that. I am so excited about it so I decided to share it with you. Great idea man!

You recomend putting retweet links through the content. How do you do that? I saw the article about the business advice and each link tweet just a little bit of text, not the link to the whole article like the tweet button.

Neil, This is by far the best blog about SEO and marketing that I’ve come across. I started in the web business about one year ago and I barely knew how the most basic concepts worked. Now I feel like I can keep up with about half of the specifics. There is so much more to learn and I just wanted to let you know that your efforts have been very valuable to me!

What a great article, only just seen it and it explains to us why some of our tweets get retweeted and not. We will certainly follow some of your guidelines Niel and look for more retweets and also ensure we include links to as this sounds link the reason many of what we think are useful tweets get forgotton.

Great article. It’s important to look at retweets as an indicator of good content and try to create quality rather than push average content at people repeatedly. BTW you should change your site so that the comment box is at the top rather than all the way down at the bottom…I’m scroll lazy…

Thanks for such a wonderful and useful Tips. I used one or two phrases from the list of most retweeted words and it works great. Additionally if possible please provide the best timing for when to share Tweets for different countries. So It will also more beneficial for us.

An intriguing discussion is definitely worth comment.
There’s no doubt that that you need to write more on this issue, it
might not be a taboo subject but typically folks don’t speak
about such subjects. To the next! Kind regards!!

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About Neil Patel

Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics. He helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP and Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 online marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations. Neil has also been awarded Congressional Recognition from the United States House of Representatives. Continue reading